“Seeing the elephant” was a common expression in the 1800s for a man meeting his fears and overcoming them. For the 9th New Jersey volunteers, which included almost all of the men from Ocean County, the elephant was found on an island called Roanoke off the North Carolina coast in February 1862.
As part of the overall Union strategy to strangle the Confederacy, Gen. Ambrose Burnside led an amphibious expedition to close off the ports of North Carolina.
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